Beating the best might be necessary to be the best

There’s not much left for Gonzaga to accomplish in men’s basketball, at least to prove the Zags belong among the nation’s elite programs.

Except, of course, for that minor detail of winning a national championship, something that eluded the Zags just two seasons ago.

Ditto for coach Mark Few.

Still considered a “young” coach despite being in his 20th season at the helm at Gonzaga, Few has 567 wins, good for 49th all time among coaches. He’s spoken highly of by his peers, and is mentioned as a future Hall of Famer.

Few has beaten some pretty good coaches in the NCAA tournament over the years.

His first win as head coach, in 2000, came over Denny Crum of Louisville, in Crum’s next-to-last season in a 30-year coaching stint with the Cardinals.

Crum finished with 675 wins at Louisville, and is 25th on the all-time wins list.

Bob Huggins is ninth on the career wins list with 788. But Few is 3-0 vs. “Hugs,” beating him once when he was at Cincinnati and twice while he was at West Virginia.

INTERESTINGLY, THOUGH, in matchups with most of the other “big-time” coaches, those coaches and their teams have gotten the better of Few and the Zags over the past two decades.

Mike Krzyzewski, the all-time winningest coach with 1,131 victories, and Duke beat Few and the Zags in their only NCAA meeting, the 2015 South Regional final.

Few is 0-2 vs. Roy Williams (No. 7, 871 wins), both times as coach of North Carolina, including the 2017 national title game the Zags think they probably should have won.

Had Syracuse beat Baylor on Thursday, Few would have gone up against Jim Boeheim (No. 2, 1,047 wins), who is 2-0 against his good friend, including a regional semifinal win three years ago.

Few also is 0-1 vs. Bob Knight (3rd, 899 wins), who beat the Zags in 2005 when he was at Texas Tech, and is also 0-1 vs. Lute Olson (11th, 776 wins) of Arizona and 0-1 vs. Tom Izzo (37th, 604) of Michigan State.

Izzo and the Spartans also won at Gonzaga in 2011 — with a little help from 34 points by Draymond Green.

Other than that ...

Few beat Gregg Marshall at Winthrop (2005), and lost to him at Wichita State (2013).

Ditto Sean Miller. Few and the Zags beat Miller and Xavier in 2006, then lost to Miller and Arizona in 2014.

On Saturday, Few beat Baylor and Scott Drew, 15 years after beating Scott’s dad, Homer, and Valparaiso.

Few is 1-1 in the tourney vs. Leonard Hamilton of Florida State, whom the Zags face today in the West Region semifinals in Anaheim, Calif. Florida State beat Gonzaga in last year’s Sweet 16; the Zags beat FSU in a first-round game in 2010, Hamilton’s eighth season in Tallahassee. Hamilton has 556 wins, and is four spots behind Few on the all-time list.

FEW AND the Zags could get another shot at Coach K, Williams or Izzo, in this year’s Final Four. While frosh-laden Duke is the oddsmakers’ choice to win the national title, the Zags and their veteran lineup are the No. 2 pick to win it all. Gonzaga has already beaten Duke this year, in the finals in Maui, and lost to North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Of course, Few and the Zags might be able to win it all without facing any of those guys.

Top-seeded Duke, for one, needed help from the basketball gods just to beat ninth-seeded UCF in the second round on Sunday.

Then again, the way Gonzaga is playing so far in the tournament, it might not matter if the Zags are playing a team whose coach has more than 1,000 victories, or one with less than 100.

Or Few and the Zags could break through and pick up another signature win to add to all their other accolades over the past two decades.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.